Louis Bouveault (11 February 1864 – 5 September 1909) was a French scientist who became professor of organic chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences of the

University of Paris The University of Paris (), known Metonymy, metonymically as the Sorbonne (), was the leading university in Paris, France, from 1150 to 1970, except for 1793–1806 during the French Revolution. Emerging around 1150 as a corporation associated wit ...

. He is known for the Bouveault aldehyde synthesis and the Bouveault–Blanc reduction.

Life

Louis Bouveault was born on 11 February 1864 in

Nevers Nevers ( , ; , later ''Nevirnum'' and ''Nebirnum'') is a city and the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Nièvre Departments of France, department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Regions of France, region in central France. It was the pr ...

. He obtained doctorates in Paris in medicine and physical sciences. Bouveault defended his thesis on β-keto nitriles and their derivatives in Paris in 1890. He taught for a short period at the Medical Faculty in

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

, then became a lecturer in general chemistry in Lyon. He influenced Victor Grignard to take up chemistry in 1894. In Lyon he investigated syntheses with

camphor Camphor () is a waxy, colorless solid with a strong aroma. It is classified as a terpenoid and a cyclic ketone. It is found in the wood of the camphor laurel (''Cinnamomum camphora''), a large evergreen tree found in East Asia; and in the kapu ...

and

terpene Terpenes () are a class of natural products consisting of compounds with the formula (C5H8)n for n ≥ 2. Terpenes are major biosynthetic building blocks. Comprising more than 30,000 compounds, these unsaturated hydrocarbons are produced predomi ...

s. Bouveault moved on from Lyon to Lille, Nancy and finally to Paris. He was appointed professor of organic chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences of the

. In 1903 Bouveault and Gustave Louis Blanc described the Bouveault–Blanc reduction for reduction of esters to the corresponding alcohols in an alcoholic solvent. In 1904 he described the Bouveault aldehyde synthesis, a formylation of an alkyl or aryl halide to the homologous aldehyde or carbaldehyde. In 1907 he was elected president of the French Chemical Society. He died on 5 September 1909.

Publications

Bouveault was a prolific author, who published many papers in his short career. Two longer works: * *

Notes

Sources

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Bouveault, Louis 1864 births 1909 deaths 19th-century French chemists 20th-century French chemists Academic staff of the University of Paris